


Favor for Ruin

by scioscribe



Category: Macbeth - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Historical Science Fiction, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-08-20 11:37:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16555037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: To reclaim humanity's sovereign hold on the Earth, the Three Witches enlist Macbeth to kill Duncan, the alien king of Scotland.





	Favor for Ruin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raspberryhunter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/gifts).



i. _When shall we three meet again?_  
_In thunder, lightning, or in rain?_

Three women huddled in a cave on the Isle of Eigg. The cave’s mouth was narrow, like a single suspicious eye, and that suited them, for they were there on suspicious business, work best-suited for dark night and briny air stinking of salt-encrusted sailors’ bones. It was well-chosen altogether. One of them had rolled the bones and foretold a massacre here in five hundred years’ time—such a stretch was nothing to them. They could reach across the centuries to borrow on that bloodthirst and terror as easily a lady would reach across a table to take hold of a plum. A sweet prize in both cases.

“So it will be Macbeth,” one said. Her lips smacked around the name, tasting it and finding it bitter. “He has a dog’s heart, sick with loyalty. It poisons his mind.”

“He may act the dog,” said another, “but he is a man, with a man’s ambitions. If he could be awakened to them—”

“We have read the signs. It must be Macbeth.”

“A shame.”

“All those better and bolder are dead,” the third woman said, “or else too weighed down by virtue. Macbeth alone stands where we need him—he has both Duncan’s trust and the will to betray it.”

“Or he will have.” There was a shrill little giggle, more like the sound of a rat falling under the claws of a cat than anything from human lips. “Once we have whispered our whispers. Does he fight still?”

They all squinted into the mists. “No, the battle ends.”

“Look upon him shining and victorious.”

“He keeps company with Banquo.”

“Whose future, if it stands, we cannot like. Yet that’s a worry that must wait. The thrill of battle will be on him yet—let us find him while his blood still pants for killing.”

“We are to him, then.”

Three witches clinging to a fickle magic. They dressed in rags and necklaces of sharks’ teeth and thorns. All three were murderers, thieves, and blasphemers. Their chaos was bound by ancient rules: they seldom spoke straight, but never could lie; they might interfere, but never without a mortal as their instrument. They could sometimes be mastered yet would never be ruled.

Men had seldom seen stranger champions of their interests than this damned little council.

ii. _So foul and fair a day I have not seen._

Their Macbeth had fought with such honor as was at hand in those diminished days, for he had been obedient to his king, capable with his sword, and thoughtless of his life. See him coming now across the heath, proud as any cock in strut, innocent of all motive in his slaughter, so justified was he by the rules of war.

The golden ones who had taken the earth for their own quarreled often over territory or else grew fagged and required diversion to liven up a dull winter. They dispatched their armies with a wave of their long-fingered hands—here to slay and there to die. Duncan’s victory over his kinsman in Ireland would give them all peace for a time as the kingdoms were rebuilt. The golden ones had more satisfaction knocking over each other’s towers once the stones had been heaped up high.

Macbeth and Banquo, heroes of the day, strode across the still-smoking field.

The witches took shallow root among the grasses.

“You will return to your lady?” Banquo said.

Macbeth nodded. “I’ll write to her tonight to say I’m bound for home. Come with me, you and Fleance—why journey now back to Lochaber and the mice and draughts of your keep when you could be my guest?”

“Am I so plain a better guest than thane? But look ahead of us,” Banquo added softly, “at those three, stooped and gray and shaggy. They are goats as much as women—and not under Duncan’s command, nor that of any of his kin, for they bear no gold sigil, no marks on their brows.”

“Then they are not real,” said Macbeth, “for none now live who do not serve.”

Close as they now stood, the witches could better see what pied soul they’d chosen to bend to their use: a man proud of his deeds, yes, but pale at the doing of them, kind to his friends and eager for his wife, deaf to his own need for trumpets. Did he sense they were the key to his lock? He stood and stared. Just lately forty, dark-eyed and russet-haired, too battered to be called handsome. A king? If not, a player who would feign the role well enough.

Banquo broke the silence. “Speak, I charge you, name yourselves. Are you ghosts, to go about so unadorned? Are you wild?”

“We are surely not tame,” one of the witches said. “You call us wild when you might call us free.”

“Who is there who is not?” Banquo said.

“All men living.”

“As they’re ruled by wives?”

“Nay, by golden strangers. –And so we see your smiles fade. The last free daughters of the earth stand before you, you bridled men—yet do not scorn us as uncivilized, good sirs, do not hate us for our words. Soon we’ll give you some you’ll like better.”

There was seldom any distinction among the women. They did not change around their places as they spoke, but knew all the same that neither Macbeth nor Banquo could have told them apart, not even by left, right, and center. To meet one was to meet all, so well did each know the other two—but old magic demanded threes, so three of them there were, three now to answer in their ringing way, each word a struck bell quivering in the still air.

“All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!”

“All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!”

“All hail Macbeth! Thou shalt be king hereafter.”

No fish would tear its lip to escape so glittering a hook. Macbeth neither moved nor spoke.

Banquo laughed. “If you would so tease my noble friend, I would be thus taunted too, for I have been o’er satisfied of late. Can your prophecies make me less so? A long day with little amusement would have its small rewards, that we be entertained with such fortune-telling, when I’d thought it a long-vanished art.”

“Yes, gone,” a witch said. “Gone with all the natural shadows of the world. Much is lost and only scraps remain.”

“Birthrights sold for pottage, long lives, and little suffering. Though here _we_ stand, ourselves a while longer, our eyes unclouded—so hail, then, Banquo, faithful attendant to Duncan’s throne. You will see less than you deserve, and more.”

“Hail, Banquo! Ever remembered alongside Macbeth—lesser in renown, greater in regard.”

“Hail, Banquo! Father of kings, though thou art none.”

“Every loyal in treachery, where Macbeth be the reverse.”

“And happy in the end—in the place where all men are happy.”

“I do not understand,” Macbeth said at last, most urgently. “Stay, explain yourselves.”

Would he need such prodding, such direction? Had they no interest in the cause, they would depart; their portion was only to stir the cauldron and help it to its boil, not serve to season the mess themselves. But this was no idle devilry.

They had suffered since the golden ones had fallen from the sky. Since then, ages had passed, and they alone, like Job’s servants, had escaped the disasters intact. Ordinary generations had lived, begat squalling babes, and died toothlessly gumming at walnuts, their eyes on the horizon. Black dogs and brownies and Jenny Greenteeth had been driven out—the golden ones would suffer no superstitions in their child-like charges. They had offered baubles for beliefs, safety for sovereignty. So the race of men now lived—guests, not lords.

And what were witches for, in the end, but the foul struggle of mortals to wield powers nature had not given them? What use were they in a world where men were content to be pampered slaves? Their gifts dwindled. They could no longer move about as they once had.

They could have withstood an enemy. They could have died outright. But this slow sapping-out of their strength, this long decline—they could not bear to pass out of this realm so slowly and with so little protest. They were fond of freedom in their own savage way; they liked to lead men to folly, but not on leashes. The passing of the age of mortals rankled.

They had given Hecate their blood, and she had given them this name: Macbeth.

As their last chance, he had a claim on them a while, so they hesitated there upon the heath.

Macbeth smiled to see them stayed. “That I am Thane of Glamis, by Sinel’s death, I know. But how of Cawdor?”

“Cawdor stands accused and misaligned. His title is yours by forfeit.”

“But Macbeth cannot be king,” Banquo said. “No man born can bear the crown.”

“Yet men, and women too, once bore it well.”

“In ages dark and now despised.”

Macbeth rubbed at his brow. “I serve Duncan with my whole heart, and owe him all. Even were I gilded head-to-toe, his kinsman by blood, I would not wish for what is his.”

“We’ll speak again anon,” a witch said.

They left as they had come, by the hidden currents of the air, and met again in a dark wood.

“He means what he says.”

“He believes what he says,” one corrected. “And means to believe it, while not meaning it at all.”

“You quibble.”

“What of his wife?”

“A lady of our own will.”

“Her name’s Macbeth the same as his. Hecate did not say which of them it would be—we saw him in the waters, but we know well the way that visions lie. Who’s to say we do not need them both? We should put the question to her.”

iii. _To catch the nearest way._

So: Macbeth’s lady. Tall and rawboned, hair so long and thick it would have kept a weaker woman from holding up her head. She was embroidering when they came to her: her needle prick-pricking white cloth with red flowers in a poor substitute for war. She sniffed them out the way a hound would have, her nostrils flared.

She wasn’t the kind to startle or cry out. She did not even slip and stab her finger, but smiled and greeted them in the manner of a lady.

“If you are spirits, say so. I know you not for any folk of mine, and your ages seem such that were you so, we would have had ample time to meet. Are you portents?”

“Flesh and blood,” one of the witches said, “like to you in kind, or once were.”

“No more so.”

“No—not to travel through the mist to appear behind a shut door, in private chambers.” Lady Macbeth steadied her hands on her lap. “Speak on. What’s your purpose here?”

Too proud to rise to her feet, this one; oh, they liked her! What a lovely sister she would have made if they had but claimed her sooner, eaten away the best fleshy fruit of her youth until she was down to bitter stone and pit. Even now, she would make a fine dagger; she would slip in smoothly and, if she broke, would fail only after the work was done.

“We’re come to tell you of your husband.”

Her lips thinned. “Dead?”

“Nay, standing, and honored too. Twiceover thane.”

“And I so loved by such as you that I get the news this way? A happier wife there has not been, to have such heralds in her keeping.” She did not wait for an answer. “What claims?”

“Glamis and Cawdor.”

“’T’would take nothing but a hand, a moment, to have more.”

Her smile was brittle. “What, still more than that? Are there to be no more thanes at all, only Macbeth?”

“We see a new world,” a witch said. There was to her almost the bubble of a separate soul—long years had come and gone since she had last worn her own name, but still there was that interruption in her featurelessness, that flaw in the glass. It was not chance but choice that made her step forward, involve herself more closely. A sad fortune, to choose to be distinct. “Long now have men lived as cattle on the world they once ruled. They are asleep to their own power and will. But we have had enough of this sickly slave’s peace—cast Duncan down, cast him out, and let Macbeth rule in his stead. Earth-born and king.”

“You see my husband on a throne.” Yes, let her say the words, find her taste for them.

“It will be his. All hail Macbeth, king reclaimant, king triumphant.”

“All hail his queen. Have a second crown made in the forge, set it upon her head, let none doubt she reigns beside him.”

“And the cost?” That strong chin of hers lifted. She was unhesitating. It was not for this one to tear herself to bits thinking did she want, and how much. Nor had she the childish, puling innocence that would demand her prizes be given to her as gifts. She would have victory or defeat alone, not their pale milksop cousins of compromise and equivocation.

The witch with the flaw in her heart said, “What he would have, he must take.”

“He is too good for that,” Lady Macbeth said. Their meaning was plain to her and not repulsive: the light in her eyes did not change in one degree. “He is bold enough, but all too true; his nature runs straight as a reed.”

“Then someone must bend it for him,” another witch said. “For it must be done, and none other can do it.”

“What matter is it to you? And can you not do it yourselves?”

“We are bound to not—and we live best as masters of ourselves. Who asked the golden ones to descend and teach us their softer ways, their physics and flashes of light? Not us, not you. Why should we suffer their pats on the head and their scraps of favor, as though we are their dogs? A well-loved cur may still be booted or starved an’ it please his master—even if he lives and dies on a cushion, he wears his collar snug and feels it with each breath. You wear yours and feel it too.”

Lady Macbeth did not reach up to touch the golden sigil of Duncan that had been painted on her brow at birth. Her body would betray her later—they saw as much—but not now, not now. Now she was steel. “You argue well. Were I a scholar, we could have a learned debate and puzzle out our freedoms and our chains. But I do not lack conviction. I asked your motive—not your reason but its source.”

“We are dying.”

She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “All born things die.”

“Not us. Not yet.”

It was in her clear gray gaze that she thought them cowards—would they really murder for no more gain than their own lives, which they would lose regardless? Her heart was cold, they thought admiringly, to judge them thus. Someone else might have had more charity for them, hearing their plight, but Lady Macbeth had less. No sympathy with need—she would have want or nothing. It was a shame, what would become of her, what would be done to that fine metallic mind.

What they would do to her, the witch with the flawed heart supposed, in order to live. And it was a low motive, in truth. Even maggots squirmed for their little lives.

“I’ll see it done,” Lady Macbeth said. “By my hand or his, I’ll remake the world. If you have seen it, then you have seen that it is so.”

Yes. They had seen the cataclysm of their realized wishes. There was no true promise in prophecy, but nonetheless they all believed with a single-minded fanatic’s faith.

Lady Macbeth said, “Does my lord make a good king?” and there was a strange echoing ring in her voice, as if the question were coming not from her throat now but from her future self, looking back down the whole length of the horror, wondering again about the price.

What use in asking? She would act no matter what.

“A great king indeed,” the witches said, for greatness was not goodness, and covered any number of sins.

The lights upon Lady Macbeth’s table flared up.

“A message from your husband,” the witches said. “He tells you all. Folly to speak through these golden tools, folly to speak except in whispers, but it will not matter yet, and you will teach him caution as you teach him boldness. And you will know what to whisper, when he comes to you.”

“Yes,” Lady Macbeth said. “I know even now.”

iv. _Who lies i’ the second chamber?_

They the mind that steered the hand, the lady the hand that wielded the knife, Macbeth the knife that shed the blood: a happy day dawned then in darkest night, when Macbeth committed noble treachery. The witches watched from the corner, disguised as dust-mites and beetles on the cold stone wall. Their talk was mistaken for the sound of crickets and the distant screaming of owls.

And they did talk continuously as the deed was done, for it was a thing they felt deserved its heraldry. They waxed fond of him, their sweet little cat’s-paw: oh, their poor dear boy, too weak to be saved by strength, too brave to be saved by cowardice, and too mixed in viciousness and goodness to be saved by either. Oh, sirrah, sirrah, they said, it is your birth we witness as much as Duncan’s death! For here comes Macbeth the tyrant, Macbeth the bringer of the dark. They could not easily count the years before cross-eyed history, seeing only its own nose, would deem him righteous or even right.

Here his hand moved and here the dagger pierced Duncan’s breast! What sport, what victory! And what murderous work, too, for the skin of the golden ones was brittle as shell and then tough as leather. Once it were well-begun, it had to be seen through to the end. It was plain Macbeth had not counted on the trial of it—none in living memory had cut through that gilded skin, so how was he to know?—but he pressed grimly on. He wept, tears bright in the dark on his death-pale face.

“Duncan’s blood will make him blush again,” one witch said. “He has not felt it yet, but he will.”

“Cool and sweet as mint sauce.”

“And Macbeth the lamb.”

“Here a wolf, by Duncan’s little whimpering sounds. I could pity him if I had pity in me still. Sister, you?”

“No,” said the witch with the flawed heart. “He is a trespasser in this place. He came into our home and called himself master of it. An’ I could slay him, I would have long ago, without this trouble.”

“Ah, smell the blood in the air!”

Macbeth pulled back from the body. The strange green ichor of Duncan’s veins, thicker than human blood, had steeped into his hands like tea into water.

The deed was done. Duncan had fallen. And Macbeth had tasted of his blood—that would give him strength and mindlessness, to do what would next need doing, for the witches had not told him all, not nearly all. They had wanted to wait for the blood.

The effect of the blood of one of the golden ones, on human skin and human tongue, was bewitching—and, like all bewitching things, secret and forbidden. It made men bold and lustful. It would poison him a little, to be pushed where they would need him pushed.

They stepped from the dark.

“What have you done to me?” Macbeth whispered. He meant, no doubt, to speak calmly; he knew all were asleep, drugged to uselessness. But his voice had gone to nothing but a rasp.

“Nature meant you to shed his blood,” one of the witches said. “See how she rewards you for it.”

“Yet I loved him. I did not mean—I do not mean to feel this way—oh, God, that it were but undone—”

“There is no time to wish and wail. Your work is left unfinished still.”

“He lies dead already. I cannot make him more so.”

“Duncan sleeps forever, but Malcolm and Donalbain live. Will you suffer your task to be only half-finished? Will you have done murder for nothing? Better three dead for victory than one dead for defeat. Be bloody, bold, and resolute—remove those who would claim the throne from beneath you, for Duncan’s sons will not allow an earthborn king. What they will not give, you must take. Do not falter now.”

“They are little more than boys,” Macbeth said. But he was convinced already—he was too drunk on strange carnage to reason his way to any other answer, right or wrong. And few could have borne then to stop still, with treason and murder done and nothing gained by it. Further sin was easier to bear than uselessness and humiliation.

“This place is yours. This keep is yours, this land, this world. They have no right to rule it, to demand your fealty, to feed you scraps.”

“Do you call Glamis and Cawdor scraps?”

“Mere scraps of Scotland itself, which will soon be yours. Now grasp it.”

“When will this night be finished?”

Never and never, they might have answered—in Macbeth’s soul, they were sure, it would always be the small hours of the morning and he would always be in this spot, dressed head-to-toe in the livery of his king’s blood, his heart racing, his cock hard, his spirit condemned. A great king, yes, for greatness is a function of scale, and none but Macbeth would ever do so much. The change he acted here would reshape all of time. His lady accepted that even if he could not—and what was the cost? Why, this, of course. He would gain the future yet never live in it.

“On, then,” Macbeth said, when they were silent. Perhaps he knew the answer that they, never truthful but always honest, could not think how to safely say.

v. _He did command me to call timely on him._

The witches woke him early.

“Why say you wake me?” Macbeth said. “I have not slept but only dreamt, and those dreams your plaguish shadows.”

Yes, they saw all about the room the evidence of his dreams, if that was what he called the disturbance of his sheets, the bruises and red bites on himself and his lady. They had been hard at love for hours and were repulsed by it. Even Lady Macbeth found a shawl to shield those marked white arms of hers from prying eyes. They must have made a gorgeous picture, the two of them, streaked with sweat and tears and green, furious and besotted. Sweet fantasies indeed, with more to come.

“Macduff approaches,” one witch said.

“Then let him come.”

His lady spoke: “Think you he’ll drop to his knees and swear himself to you? With our home stinking of his kinsmen’s blood?”

“Who is to say I am the one who spilled it?”

They could tire of him quickly: a dog’s heart he’d once had, but now he strove to think himself a wolf, and did poorly at it. They would rather have his obedience than his partnership. They did not value his words; they did not need to hear him speak. “You are to say so. Your gains must come from death, not sweetness. Slay all who would come between you and your object.”

“These same tired phrases.”

“You have soldiered,” the witch with the flawed heart said. “You have lugged Duncan’s standard into a dozen battles fought for little purpose—a summer’s delight, a flurry of boredom. You know that war is death repeated.”

“Why ask this of me?” But he was beginning at least to dress, as though it were only nakedness that made him savage. Let him prepare as he liked.

“The kings of the world are their enemies,” Lady Macbeth said. A false calm had fallen over her voice, smooth and featureless as snow. Much could be lost in that drift. “Each new wonder from our masters drives out a little of their magic. They want us simple, scared creatures in the dark—only then can they live. Like writhing grubs beneath a rock. But what does it matter, husband? Half the deed is done already. We cannot stop now.”

“We require freedom,” the witches said. “Sovereignty.”

Macbeth’s laugh was harsh. “You would not allow that to me.”

“We would put a crown upon your head. Give you fair counsel, warn you of your enemies.”

“Yes, you’d put jewels on my collar, so long as I tear out throats on your command.”

“But that is what you are already,” the witches said. “It’s only your circumstances we twist—we’ve worked no change in your soul.”

“Have you not? Then whence has it flown? For I do not feel it.” He touched his eyes. “At least Duncan ruled with a light hand—brought prosperity—gave me love—at least with him I was fooled.”

“You must go,” Lady Macbeth said. Her voice was free from mercy.

“The slaughter may be nearly done,” said the witch who pitied him. “Macduff is the last of his kind in these lands. Rally your own people, restore their pride, and hold out against the golden ones who would press at your borders. You will long be remembered.”

As a tyrant, as a monster, as the bringer of collapse. As tragedy and calamity. All good he did or caused would long vanish; the Romans stirred the ashes of Pompeii into the mortar of their walls, but they did not love the mountain for it.

Their man tarried too long. Macduff escaped. That was the first of their disappointments.

vi. _Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,_  
_As the weird women promised, and, I fear,_  
_Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said_  
_It should not stand in thy posterity,_  
_But that myself should be the root and father_  
_Of many kings._

Macbeth should have done for Banquo too while the traitor slept beneath his roof, but he turned coward on them, mild as custard. Oh, such excuses! Was Banquo not a man like him, he demanded to know, earthborn just as he was? Was he not told he should do all this for the glory of men? What champion murdered his closest companions?

“Fated or not, our choice was ill-made,” the witches said. “What drunkard would ever avail himself of your blood? Your veins run with milk. We should have thrown the spark of prophecy on your lady and had her burn for it; she has vigor enough even without her enemy’s gore on her hands.”

Lady Macbeth watched this conversation from the hearth and said, “But it is without purpose now. He’s fled with Macduff.” She curled and uncurled her long fingers, as if searching them for the blood the witches had spoken of. She would have liked a bit of it then, wouldn’t she? A drop to tide her over and clear her head.

“He must have given Macduff some word,” Macbeth said. “Warned him as to the prophecy, which these ladies allowed him to hear.”

“Twist, twist. Blame us for what your own delay has caused twiceover—you will not be moved and then you say the wind has blown you about.” One witch spat off into the fire, which flared black and violet at the touch of something cast off from her body. “You would cling to a puling innocence you lost with the first cut of Duncan’s breast, and for that you have let Macduff and the traitor Banquo take flight. They will warn the golden world of your uprising. If you would make war and yet be good, you will win nothing.”

Macbeth looked up. How these last few days had eaten away at his smile; it was now nothing more than a glimpse of his skull, a baring of his teeth. “You did prophesy that the lineage would fall to Banquo’s children. Tell me, do the golden ones hand Scotland to his line as a prize for my head? Is that how you have your mortal land restored?”

“We do not know.”

“We cannot know.”

“We see but islands in a chain. But,” added the witch who pitied him, “we love Banquo not.”

“Is this what it is to have your love?” Macbeth said. “For I would fain do without.”

He lied and did not know it—there never was a man more compelled by his own untruths. He required their love more and more with each passing day. His wife was a fellow sinner, suffering from walking in her sleep, and could give him no comfort; he depended upon the witches to lay cool hands about his head and tell him sweet lies about his righteousness. He cut into the bodies of the king and princes and unearthed their veins to satiate his lady’s newfound thirst. He ordered every seeing- and speaking-crystal in Scotland smashed, every treasure of the golden ones burned to ashes, lest they spy upon him. And he required the witches to tell him if it had been done.

They crowned him and the lady, not at Scone—it was unwise to travel—but in the bedchamber where Duncan had breathed his last. Macbeth’s knees aching against the cold flagstones. He knelt for them where Lady Macbeth only bowed (and that only briefly). They saw, without compassion, the white of the part in his now-graying hair.

“I thought him ambitious once,” one of the witches said when they were only three. “But strewth, there’s a man who needs a master.”

“Or a mistress.”

“Mistresses,” said Macbeth’s witch. “But that is our own doing. We woke him to his power only to put him in ours, and wield him; you cannot expect an arrow to not require a bow. Three murders in a night and two further asked of him in the morn—and the hatred of all. We have broken him.”

“I have kicked dogs before, when they would not do as they were told.”

“And I, sister, but we wanted a greater soul for him than that, even if we had to confine it.” She stirred the ashes of their fire, which burned not on wood but on walnut shells and rabbit bones and fresh-torn liver. “We’ve given Banquo’s children a crown. That future stands.”

“It is a mortal future, one of men and women of our kind.”

“As a pittance thrown to the obliging. A collaborator’s future, for years on years, before new revolution comes.”

“It is not ours to dictate the terms of victory, sister,” the eldest witch said sharply. “You reach beyond your powers. Do not grow fond of these two—they will wither and die like grass. Nothing here has weight but what will ripple out in centuries to come, and what will ensure we three live to see it.”

vii. _He will not be commanded: here’s another,  
More potent than the first._

Hecate lectured that singular witch more sternly still, but did not spare any of her followers from blame:

“You have all lingered here past your time. History grows filthy with the marks of your hands, and to what end? The earth’s future was securely mortal as soon as young Malcolm and Donalbain did breathe their last—why then have you spurred on this cat’s paw of yours to dabble further in green blood, and make war with Macduff? You spur on chaos that may be our ruination, when Macbeth might have safely been king only of an hour and satisfied our prophecies.”

“We are further down in the dirt of this world than you, Hecate. We would have the powers here be of our own earthborn blood, and if they be puppets, be our own.”

“Hush. I’ll have no more from you. And if you so insisted on him,” she added, “he should have been my own, but you were too selfish for it to be so.”

Sometimes mastered—had they not thought that was their nature?—but never ruled; they had little love for each other and none at all for Hecate, only the worship of their blood and the pleasant shivers to be won from her praise. They were loath to surrender a pleasure and more reluctant still to give up any portion of their power.

Did some loyalty to their softer sister, who had involved herself so deeply in these petty affairs, move them at all even as they themselves had reproved her for it? The most afflicted could not know; the others would never say.

But all must, however stirred, give way. They could avoid their mistress but not defeat her, not when her interests were roused.

“I’ll call up sprites to play will o’ the wisp, to bear him on to sure disaster, and you will see how deftly it is done. All will be as I say now: Banquo perished—let that please you—and then those of this castle. Bright-haired Fleance will be crowned boy-king and let fly the arrow of time, to pierce the golden rule of law some generations hence.”

“Let us fight, then, and pierce it now,” said the witch who had come to favor Macbeth.

“There is no collective beyond this room,” Hecate said, “so why do you speak of ‘us?’ You have not common cause with the ordinary sons and daughters of this world.” She laid a hand upon the witch’s cheek, her fingers cold; the life had long since gone from them. Her heart had not thought to beat in years. “Have care for your speech, daughter, lest you soon have mind to care for naught. This is not yours to traffic in, not now; your work’s ended. Bring your man to me, aye, and his lady too, and I will tell tales to them both.

“And you,” she said, “you, softhearted fool, will hold your tongue or lose it.”

Macbeth and his lady were summoned to their chambers and came, the witches saw, with surly obedience and selfish love—yet the love was there, the one witch would say, and unfeigned too. She thought they looked an unlikely portrait of a king and queen—what queen had had such green-tinged lips from her incurable thirst? What king had had such fits and starts of guilt and terror? (What king before this one had had the conscience to? Oh, but she had grown partial, to return their fealty thus.) But they were king and queen no less for that and would have been resplendent once, on illuminated pages. They had the beauty of all grand things gone to tatters and shame. How straight each had stood, when she had first met them! What pride had shone in their countenances!

They had been wrecked against the rocks and now their heads would be thrust down.

In the bloodied waters drown.

“What lady’s this?” Macbeth asked of them, looking particularly at the witch who had taken him as a favorite. He had begun to know her.

“Our mistress.”

“Hecate.”

The witch he had directly asked did not speak, but let their guests’ eyes linger on her closed lips.

Hecate then did her work—conjured up some chattering heads and, bringing them to speak, told the king and queen all they wanted and feared to hear.

 _Lady, lady, you do not drink;_  
_the cup’s gone dry, no hand will pour._  
_Without it sleep will come no more._

_No gold or brass shall harm Macbeth  
but woman-born bring his death._

“That little narrows it,” Macbeth said.

“Be still, there’s more.”

 _Still, scorn the crowd without your walls._  
_Within them’s where a blow will fall._  
_At your own hand you’ll bring your doom_  
_while sat at supper in your room._

“What, to put poison in his soup? Why fear his own hands?” Lady Macbeth said—but scrubbed her own, to rid them of imagined stains, aye, and likewise her lips. Already she looked pale and shaken, to know there’d be no golden-bled tonic to help her to bed. She must have suspected, for their draining of the dead could not go on forever, but prophecy was worse than fear. Dark thoughts the queen did entertain behind her cool and rigid smile.

viii. _This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues,  
Was once thought honest: you have loved him well._

Banquo’s return to Inverness announced the end of Macbeth and his brief, benighted reign.

Many Scots had scorned their self-declared king—who was he to set himself above them, when his blood ran red as their own, when he had no shine and no glory but what had been handed to him? Who was he but a murderer, a common cutthroat? Nay, worse: a defiler, blasphemer, and traitor, to lay waste to good Duncan and his sons. He had sent them back into a distant time of shadows and desperation. Why did they die now of sicknesses for which they’d one had golden cures? Why were their lives made hard? Why had he deprived them of their comforts, even of their necessities?

This crowd greeted the return of Banquo with cheers: at last, they cried, someone sensible to put things to rights, someone of their own mind. They were like Banquo in kind and station; the lower folk had never had the golden ones’ gifts to lose them and so, on the whole, would as soon have Macbeth, and liked him, though they had few weapons and little voice to raise in his name. It was Banquo’s friends who would write the histories, and, knowing this, he hailed them with great solemnity.

“A fool of a man,” one witch said.

Confronted with men beyond their own, they all grew partisan.

“An honorable father, though, to die so obligingly for his son’s inheritance.”

“Would he if he knew?”

“I fear to answer yes, but think that’s so: our enemies seldom lack for sentiment. For even Duncan loved his sons.”

“Duncan even loved Macbeth,” another witch observed.

“And Macbeth him, and Macbeth Banquo, and Banquo Macbeth again—Scotland and the stars both are full of fools.”

They watched as their Macbeth, surrounded by his guard, met Banquo upon the steps. Would they embrace? They seemed to consider it, leaning toward each other for a moment, but did not: the time for love was done.

“I’ve come to treat with you,” Banquo said. His voice carried through the gray air; his hound-dog gaze could not, but the witches saw it nonetheless, and beyond it too. All his sleepless nights and fealties and ambitions were laid bare to them. He had a sane mind still, for all his troubles; a pity he could never have been induced to kill Duncan, to take the risks of regicide.

Macbeth crossed his arms. His signet ring a flash of light, an obsidian spark. “In whose name?”

“The golden ones. The gilded. The bloodline of Duncan, our king.”

“I have no king,” Macbeth said, “except that I rule myself. But come inside—you were a friend once to me. Or do you fear to enter?”

“As I know what happens to do those who eat your bread and sleep beneath your roof? No, I have no dread of you. You’ll not invite their answer to your blow.”

But Macbeth only smiled: he had come to true wolfishness at last, to look so. Hecate’s spirits had given him that much consolation, at least: he knew no golden hand would ever crush his throat or fling him to the ground. He made no answer and only stepped aside to welcome Banquo in.

The witches followed them without sight or sound.

“Strange to drift as dust again, when we’ve had our own shapes so long.”

“Yes, we’ve made a habit of our skins.”

Macbeth took his best and oldest friend, the one-time honored guest of his hospitality, into the hall where dinner had been prepared for them. The roast was abutted here and there with knobs of gray-white bone: the witches hungered for the marrow of it. They were starved for things not freely given. Food little nourished them unless it had been stolen from the mouth of a babe or widow, and there were none of those in Inverness, for all the hall’s dark doings.

“What offering do they extend?” Macbeth said, motioning him to eat.

“My masters? They offer you your life.”

“That’s nothing gained to me, I have it now.”

“Yes, but will not have it later.”

Macbeth poured them wine.

“And where,” said Banquo, “is your lady?”

“Abed,” Macbeth said shortly. Yes, that was so: abed with her hands scraped raw from scrubbing and her body parched with need: what sad rubble for her magnificence to amount to. Her husband loved her no less for it, but was tender with her as a mother: wet her lips and bound up her wounds.

“It’s not yet dark. She sleeps?”

“In ignorance of your questions.”

Banquo sighed. “You may have my answer nonetheless: she’ll have her life too.”

“None shall take it from her while I live. But why talk of our lives? Are the golden forces too weak to assail us here, that they must send a milk-blooded slave to wheedle me into kissing their feet? I stand while you would have me crawl. I do not like it, will not do it. If your masters wish me to surrender Scotland, by God, let them offer me England instead.”

“You grow too bold,” Banquo said, slamming his goblet down. “The weird sisters have poisoned you. You were a good man once. I stood beside you as Duncan honored you with Cawdor, have you now forgotten it? You were content.”

“Content and blind, and neither now. My stage is a wider one than yours.”

“Be neither blind nor deaf,” Banquo said, leaning forward to speak earnestly to him. His eyes were dark with what passed for anger in such an even-tempered man. “Rather hear me now, for we were brothers in times past, and would have died in each other’s arms upon the field. The golden ones are merciful with the penitent, but not so with those who persist in their sins. A horse that will not pull must be beaten. And they will not suffer you to hold Scotland unopposed, moving other men to imitation.”

“But they will not turn this castle to dust with me inside,” Macbeth said, with that thin inhuman smile. “It is a little less loving than they would want to look. Their numbers are not so great as they pretend, Banquo—I have seen these things in my dreams and heard them in my counselors’ words. They depend upon our acquiescence. If we will not bear the yoke—”

“They will tie her to a stake,” Banquo said. He seized upon Macbeth’s sleeve. “Your lady who’s so oft abed. They say she’s grown monstrous, a blood-eater. If you do not surrender, they will not count themselves finished until they’ve burnt her to ash before your eyes—”

He stopped, for Macbeth had stopped him. He breathed no more.

Macbeth took back the carving knife and wiped the blade clean upon the cloth. He looked like a man asleep. “I thought he would be the one to do it,” he said, “and welcomed him in and sat him down… Why did he not?”

“’Twas not his vice,” his own witch said.

“No.” He laughed. “No, ’tis mine, I see. But he—he should have not threatened her—I told him often of my love—would you not say so? You know me better than all others.”

“It was unwise of him.”

“I was called godfather to his boy, a second sire. I would have brought him up as my own, had this happened on the course my life once followed.” He drove the knife into the table: held upright by the wood, it trembled as if uncertain. “When will it be over, madam? I had wanted to die by a friend.”

Into that silence his servant Seyton came: “The queen, my lord, is dead.”

“And this for nothing, then,” said Macbeth dully, looking upon Banquo’s body. His face had lost all color, as though his blood had run out with his friend’s and mingled there upon the floor. “She should have died hereafter.”

ix. _Why should I play the Roman fool, and die  
On mine own sword?_

Months passed between Banquo’s death and the changed witch’s next words with Macbeth. He was still not old, though he’d begun to look it. She had never known him in the flush of youth.

He was not surprised by her visit. “When I saw the army massed, I thought you’d come. But where are your sisters?”

“It is only I.”

He studied her closely. “I’ve never seen you alone. You favor me.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I owe you favor in recompense for ruin. I think that you have made me strange.”

“Your name, what is it?”

“I have none.”

“Did you ever?”

“Yes, but I do not remember it.”

He nodded at the narrow window through which the sight of the gathered forces was plain. “It’s pleased me to be king, these weeks, as much as anything has, which is little, but this is the end, I know. That field is full of men born of earthly women—nearly all of Scotland, it seems, but I’ve had little occasion to acquaint myself with my kingdom since I took it. All the air has grown so stale here.” He leaned against his table, his hands straight. If his face were gnarled, his hands were still those of a young man, his knuckles tight, his fingers elegant. “But I wonder what your mistress intended, when she sent you all to vex and claim me, and I wonder all the more about what passed when she came herself. Was Banquo to kill me, or I him? Is Fleance in the host outside, so the truth is that I doomed myself by the blow that killed his father, that he will claim revenge for it? Or…”

He plucked up a dagger from the table. “This did for her, and might for me. And a corner of cheese here laid beside my papers would make this supper. I am of woman born. The words fit, as I remember them. Is this what was intended?”

“No. That’s what I’ve come to tell you.”

He smiled. There was an awful tenderness to it. “And not for friendship?”

No, for even she, softened as she was, was incapable of that, though that she spared him enough not to say so. “Only to tell you that to know you’ll die is no prophecy. Your lady said as much to us, once—all born things must die and even the failing of your heart would be death by a mortal man. Your part is done—it’s over now, there’s nothing. The work’s fulfilled.”

“The work. That Banquo’s son will be crowned after me, whenever and however I die, and that then you’ll have your sovereign Scotland—the first restored kingdom of the earth.”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “I’ve little joy in it. And after all that, my lady, I no longer wish for freedom—I am so untethered now I’ll drift away like a ghost. Quick, if you love me, tie me down again. Tell me my fortune as you used to.”

But she could not. He had come to the end of his fate, with naught left for him but tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. In the long quiet between them there came only the cry of the wind, which bore up the mingled scents of mist and heather, horses and leather, their hard-won world of men.


End file.
